 both academic and activist of the key issues around the challenges that many whistleblowers are facing around the globe today. Joining me on the panel today are Professor Martz Anders, former chair of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, QC Honoris Causa, is that right? And also Professor Leola Lazarus, Leora is an academic and a lawyer, and Professor Eva Joly, who is a well-respected anti-corruption activist and lawyer and a member of the Paris Bar. Welcome to the three of you and also welcome to my co-conspirator, Professor Ian Monroe, an expert in whistleblowing from the University of Newcastle. In terms of today's session, the way we will run this session is that we will start with the contributions from our three invited guests. After that, we will go into some Q&A with questions that you can feed in. If you look across the bottom of your screen, you will see a chat tab and a Q&A tab, you can feed in the questions. Some of you have of course sent some questions already in advance and I will try and feed them in on your behalf. We are in webinar mode at the moment, but at some point in this discussion, we will invite you in when you have to speak so we might promote you to panellists so you can ask your question out aloud. I just want to let you know that while the chat tab is open, if you want to provide a message, please send your message to the tab marked panellists and attendees, not just to panellists because your fellow attendees won't be able to see who you are. It'd be really nice if you tell us from which part of the world you are and where you're sending your solidarity to Julian from. Julian, as you know, is still in Belmarsh prison, locked down because of the COVID restrictions and also isolated away from his family and at risk because he has a chronic lung condition since 2012 and hasn't been given his warm clothing which was delivered in October. We are in a situation where he, the judge in the UK, despite our slight disappointment with some aspects of the ruling, has ruled that Julian cannot be extradited. We are now awaiting, Julian is now awaiting an appeal placed by the American lawyers. We understand that the Americans have been given two further weeks to present their grounds so we're still waiting to hear what they intend to say in terms of the wonderful prison conditions in the US and of course Julian's excellent help that will allow them to now extradite Julian to the US. And without further ado, could I invite Mats, Mats, you have about eight minutes and I'll wave it to you when it's time. So over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I was involved with this case, as you mentioned as the leader of this chair of this United Nations working group on arbitrary detention and the reason we got involved was that the Julian Assange's lawyers were looking around for some international body for some human rights body which could review his situation and the way he had been persecuted by authorities in the US and in the United Kingdom and also in Sweden. And the situation is, as I expect, we all are very, very much aware of that in Julian Assange, we have a publisher journalist, whistleblower who ends up as the one who is punished, while those who have committed the crimes which he has revealed are not punished. So you can just join in the queue or people who persecute Mr Assange. Now, as again, as you all know, he founded Wikileaks in 2006 and then it's the 2010 events, the publishing of a series of leaks including those from Chelsea Manning. They got the US authorities to start a formal criminal investigation and then at the same, more or less, at a very convenient time at least in November 2010, Sweden issues an international arrest warrant. This was a case which prosecuted for allegations of sexual assault and this case goes up to the UK Supreme Court as an extradition request and in the Supreme Court, they uphold the extradition request and Julian Assange seeks asylum in the embassy on grounds of political persecution. One point to add to this early stage is that when he was arrested for in the context of this arrest warrant early on, he was then put into Belmarsh and subjected to this full isolation regime, which had no justification, certainly no justification at the time, not that it has any more justification today. And then in this Ecuadorian embassy, time went on. The Swedish prosecutor had as reason for the extradition request and said that they wanted to interrogate him about what had gone on in Sweden. Of course, according to the practice of prosecutors, police in Scandinavia, they could have interviewed him in London, but they did not. They wanted him extradited and that's why this request went through this Swedish, this UK court, English and UK court process. And at the same time, there were challenges to this process in the Swedish system saying that it was disproportionate to want him extradited. They should have then just interviewed him practically in London. Now, when this case then came to the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention, his situation was that he had this embassy asylum under international law practice of seeking asylum in an embassy, which is particularly strong among the Latin American countries. And Assange was in all practical ways in a detention situation. There were police officers outside, politicians and police officials had made it clear that the moment he stepped into the street, he would be arrested. And the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention is the specialist body of the United Nations on the tension, on arbitrary detention. And it looked around in its own jurisprudence. And there were a number of legal issues. The working group when they then issued their opinion on, it was a Friday, wasn't it? On the 5th of February, those years ago. And what the working group then said was, well, first of all, it was disproportionate to arrest him and keep him in this isolation when they initially arrested him in 2010. And then the working group continued. He was in this asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. He was in what constituted an arbitrary detention in violation or Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And one of the cases it had to look to, which is not cited in the final opinion by the working group, but which is in the jurisprudence that the working group worked on the basis of is a decision relating to the wife of the Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate who lived in a flat in Chinese city. Her telephone line stopped functioning whenever she got the mobile phone. It worked for the first couple of hours. And then it stopped working at stage of technology at the time, I expect. The authorities could then stop it in that way. But it was a little moment she could perhaps talk when she walked into the street. There were a large number of tall men in dark suits standing around her in a threatening way, which made it impossible for her to move anything but back to her flat. That the working group said constituted arbitrary detention. This was a deprivation of liberty, not only a restriction on liberty and it in that decision referred to a case from the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, which was well, well recent and which we felt we then could could use in that Chinese case. Now, this applied in the working group's recent opinion to Assange. He was in a situation where he had been deprived of his liberty. Now, if I was going just to add a couple of words at the end, it's that our process, the working groups at work, which was by the way concluded after I had left, after my term had run out as chair reporter of this working group. The working group is just a little, little piece in it. It's the first time one UN body, United Nations body, censured the Swedish and the UK authorities. After that, several other United Nations special reporters have done the same. For instance, the special reporter on the freedom of expression and the special reporter on torture, the latter then saying that the conditions that Assange was held in first in the embassy and afterwards in Belmarsh constituted torture. Now, in our case and what made it interesting also that the special reporter on the freedom of expression criticised the UK authorities. What made that interesting is of course that the working group in its jurisprudence also made clear that when there was somebody who was persecuted because of the way in which they had pursued Article 19, that's the freedom of expression provision in the National Covenant, the UN instrument, article 10 in the European Convention, whenever somebody were persecuted or for that matter, even being legitimately prosecuted, and the national authorities and that will include the prosecutors and the courts would have a higher threshold in terms of reasoning. They had to show that in this case, it was not the question of persecuting somebody in violation of article 10 of the European Convention, article 19 of the Covenant, the UN instrument. And that is is an other important legal foundation for the working groups decision that here it was to the working group clear that Mr Assange was persecuted because of his use of his is legitimate use of his freedom of expression. I think my role here is to talk about this part of the history and not take the discussion till today. And, and you know, there are many other legal issues which are which are interesting, but seen from the 2014 15 perspective and seen from the 2020 21 perspective, we see very strong bodies of state state organs in the United States supported by UK authorities and some Swedish authorities. They have subjected Mr Assange to a series of different legal processes with one aim in mind, and that is to bring Mr Assange to the United States to face what they would see as the wall to face the legal process they want to him to face there, which we from the outside can say with high degree of certainty would lead to prison, long prison and the prison regime, which would be unacceptable to our ways of regarding justice freedom of expression and the requirements will have to the rule of law and our legal system. Deepa is that my time running out now so I should pulse over to the to the next speaker perhaps. And I think there are a few interesting things which we'll probably come back to there, including whether Julian could have been interviewed in the UK, whether he could have been interviewed remotely but also the questions about how the US sanitizes a torture by calling it enhanced compensation techniques or whether it justifies solitary confinement calling it special administrative measures, or, you know, the ways in which these words are used to justify quite horrendous and casualties, which come on the back of what Wikileaks has done in relation to exposing it, not a one off war crime but a persistent and pernicious attempt by the US to commit war crimes across the world. And that, especially at a time when we're all talking about black lives matter and thinking about what that means in the context of our own lives I think it's important to remember the black lives that were that were lost and continue to be lost in the black lives, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in other parts of the world as a result of brutal US interventions everywhere and the interventions of their allies and the support of their allies including Britain. On that note, I'd like to invite our next week up Professor Eva Jolie to offer a few thoughts Eva you have about eight minutes. The introduction of Eva Jolie that of course, the way I got to know her, we are actually both Norwegian, our roots are Norwegian, but Eva of course had an incredible role in the French prosecution investigation and prosecution of high level protection as an investigating magistrate as we translated into English. And then of course was a presidential candidate that I'm sorry, you're not the president of France today Eva that would be fantastic. Thank you, thank you. Good evening, everybody. And thank you for inviting me to this important panel talking about an important subject. And I want to tell you first why I got involved with children recording in progress. Yes, got the message. In 2009, I worked in Iceland with the Icelandic prosecutors on their bank crisis. And at that time, Julian was also in Iceland. He wanted to establish, not a paradise for tax haven, but a paradise for journalists, a place where you could have free speech without incurring libel and so on. I thought that that time that was a very interesting project. And we worked a little bit together on it. And then later, when I went then I went for elections and I lost a little bit to the contact with him. And I discovered in 2012 in the summer that he was in the embassy, and I went to see him. And so I got interested in his case. And I was so shocked then that the Swedish prosecutor pretended she could not make an interview with him in London, and she even wrote it on her blog. She is called Marianne. And from my experience with a lot of colleagues, I know that most of the time it is incompetence or it is that they have not followed development rather than bad intention. So my first thought was that she don't know that she can do it. I was very naive. And I thought I will go and tell her how to do it because making interviews in another European city is what all prosecutors and investigative magistrates are doing every day. So I couldn't understand this position. And I thought, well, I must explain it to her. And I was very disappointed when she didn't want to meet with me. And I started understanding that there was something else behind. And I met with a lot of people in Stockholm and I understood that the reputation of Assange had been destroyed already a lot. And what made the whole story so complicated is that it was Sweden. Sweden, which is considered normally as being the home of human rights, which has a record with high merits. And so it was obvious that something was wrong here. At that time, we didn't know exactly what was ongoing, but we had these signals that things were wrong. Today we know what happened because we have had access to the prosecutor's file and that the mails have been exchanged with the Crown Prosecution Service and even mail received from the FBI. We have a lot of information and we know that the Crown Prosecution Service put pressure on the Swedish prosecutor not to come to London to interview him. And when they wanted to close the case, they said, you shouldn't get cold feet. And you must not believe, you must not think that Assange is just an ordinary extradition case. So it was not really even hidden amongst themselves. They knew what they were doing. So when you look at it in a retrospective matter, you can see that it was manipulated from the very beginning because the two young women that went to a police station, they never complained about the rape. And even when they understood that that was what the police wanted to write, one of the girls left the police station. So we have proof today that the inquiry was manipulated in order to build up a case. And this was successfully done by the Swedish authorities. And we also discovered, the world discovered that the Swedish system, there is no possibility of appeal against the decision of a prosecutor. And that made it also very difficult to get another prosecutor to take the case. So a lot of things that was not normal in the beginning that led to Julian's Julian going into the embassy using his right to ask for international protection. That was not accepted by the Swedish prosecutors. They went on for years. And so we know the end of the story. We know that he was thrown out of the embassy very violently and that he was then put into isolation in the Belmarche prison. And I want to say, as a church, I have been a church for 30 years in my life. And at that point, Julian Assange, he was not convicted. There were only a request from the US for extradition. Why on earth should you put somebody in isolation because he is under request for extradition. This is really very, very strange. And it's one more indication that this case is not a normal case. It has been guided from the beginning by the FBI, by the CIA. The Americans really wanted Assange in order to show the world that you don't publish without violent sanctions, things concerning and giving a bad picture of the American army and the American politics. And it has continued since then. We know that the way the hearings were conducted, but I think Deepa will tell us more about that was also absolutely not normal. It is so important today that Julian Assange is not extradited. We have a ruling in this sense, the first sentence, and I think it's extraordinary to hear that the Americans has been given two more weeks to argue they are appeal. It is not the Americans that are allowed to make an appeal in the UK. It is the UK prosecutors, but they are even not hiding that they are acting on behalf of the Americans. I see a very important issue here. If we admit that a journalist and editor can be extradited for having published texts that is not an offence in Europe because publishing what is true and what is of public interest, you are allowed to do that in Europe. That would mean that the US law would have a pre-balance on European law and that it would be for the Americans to decide what we can publish and not publish in Europe and that we don't want to happen. This is already what has happened in the fight against corruption where the Americans has kind of universal competence because they consider that if the dollar is used in a deal that is sufficient for giving them then competence. They have taken this possibility and they are weakening the European enterprises this way under cover of fighting corruption. So this must not happen. This is a very important point for me and I want to add that I do not believe that the conditions for extradition are fulfilled. I can't see the double, it is not punishable in England to publish what he has published. So the Americans want to say that it is espionage and not publishing, but they have no proof of that. So I really hope that the appeal court and the Supreme Court in the UK will withstand this demand with legal arguments and not with the health condition of Assange. We are happy that the truth barrister did find a way not to deliver him to the US, but I think that the legal work could be better done and that there are better arguments not for making this extradition. Yes. Thank you. Thank you Eva. There was a lovely introduction from arts and very helpful contribution from yourself. I think, you know, in addition to the point you make about this criminalizing journalism and making things very difficult, I think the reason the Americans and the British state are aiding others and going after Julian Assange is because Julian set a wonderful example for surveillance because instead of having surveillance capitalism and state surveillance where the state and corporations surveil us for once the balance was redressed in favour of citizens with us surveilling the state and understanding the crimes that are governments and our corporations committed our name. And also, of course, in addition to the courage was the phenomenal foresight of creating a drop box where the where whistleblowers could anonymously provide phenomenal amounts of information which wasn't available before and the use of technology wasn't available before in the same way, and also do so anonymously but securely in a way that was not just secure for the whistleblower, but secure for the quality of the documentation and as an academic of course I feel very happy when I see an archive where you can go back when you see the classified documents and people like Mark Curtis when look at these documents and make sense of what was actually going on in the world, which the Americans the British and other governments try to hide behind false classification. So, thank you for sharing that insight and I'd now like to welcome our third guest Professor Liora Lazarus Liora over to you. I'm talking to you here from Vancouver, which is on the traditional ancestral and unseeded territory of the Coast Salish people and I wanted to acknowledge that before I started talking. Now I want to sort of clarify my reason for being involved in this panel and also for my general position on this. In 2016 when the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention passed down its judgment, I had prior to this not had any involvement in the Assange case other than that I have had quite a long working relationship with Jen Robinson who was my student at Oxford and was a Assange lawyer. I did not have any particular view I was concerned to hear that they were allegations of rape against him at the time, and I did not have any understanding of the facts behind those. Nor do I, did I share the insights that Professor Jolly has so I was, in fact, in no way motivated for any other reason to write about Assange. And that what prompted me in 2016, the day that the working group on arbitrary detention handed down its decision to say something in the blog and publications that I did was the general outlaw around reception of this decision by the legal officials in the United Kingdom. I felt I was irritated and I remember sort of sitting up in bed going this isn't right. And it's not right because the way that the response was happening in the press generally, and by top legal officials was to be entirely dismissive of the standing and authority of the working group on arbitrary detention number one, and number two, to say that I had no binding nature on the United Kingdom, or that the decision itself was, in their view, substantively ludicrous, ridiculous, and crazy so the general view was to say that Assange had been arbitrary detained was simply ridiculous. My work is in prisoners rights and in, and in detention generally and human rights and at the time I was an Oxford thinking about these questions. And so I sat down and wrote a response to the issue and really what my response was is two fold. And perhaps I would add a layer on to that subsequently, which is first of all the working group on arbitrary detention is a standing international human rights body with sick with the only. It's the only international human rights body vested with the authority to clarify the position on international human rights with respect to arbitrary detention. And now these types of bodies are quite common. Even without treaty based these are commonly bodies that underpin the human rights system internationally and if we do not have some respect for their position as domestic authorities then we have a problem with the whole of the international human rights law system. The first point was to do with the authority of the body itself that doesn't mean that its judgment or its decision was binding on the UK authorities strictly speaking but that recorded some respect in terms of the international rule of law. The second is that there are two issues here the first is whether or not you could have characterized Assange's position at the time in the Ecuadorian Embassy as a deprivation of liberty. In legal terms, the question here is the distinction between restrictions on freedom of movement and the idea that someone may be deprived of their liberty. This is a distinction that exists at the international human rights law level, and also the European Court of Human Rights. Now, the way that the working group and our detention came to the conclusion that they were that he was in fact deprived of his liberty was simply to say that Assange was not volitionally free to remain in the embassy. In other words, it wasn't just a question of his own choice. And you saw a lot of popular responses to the judgment saying Assange could leave at any time if he chose to and he could walk out the front door and etc etc. And if you'd been around that area you could have walked down the street to see there were plenty of police officers. So it was clearly a construction if you like to say that this was Assange's decision to say in the Ecuadorian Embassy on his free will. Now as counterintuitive as it may seem to the populace. It isn't the case that all deprivations of liberty consists only in the in a full world prison. There is plenty of international law jurisprudence and other authority to show that deprivation of liberty can consist outside of those categories. And clearly the view that Assange had entered the embassy on his own choice was seemed to be particularly influential in the way that this was viewed by the UK authorities. And in a way what we have to confront here is that he was resisting arrest and the point about that was that in a law enforcement terms whether they should allow that to happen. And of course resisting arrest is not necessarily something that we wish to promote. However, it doesn't mean that your right to liberty is in all responses then negated because you are in a condition of resistance. So that was the first legal point I wanted to make and I supported the working group on arbitrary detention in that respect. So this notion that Assange was self-confirming seemed to be one that was very strong and I didn't view that as in principle one that was tenable or sustainable. The second point of all the next point I'd like to make is just to say that Assange's condition of being deprived of liberty does not necessarily mean that his deprivation was arbitrary. In order to say that something is arbitrary you have to have more information or more legal arguments. So it is possible to argue that Assange being detained in the embassy by the authorities outside of there had reasons for doing so with respect to law enforcement and those arguments are legitimate to present. So I was scrutinizing that question and essentially I came to the view that the decision of the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention was well founded because it viewed the detention as arbitrary because it was disproportionate. Now what do we mean by that? Disproportionality in this context often means that there might have been a better, less restrictive way of proceeding with the process and as a consequence we look to the facts to see whether that is possible. And this is where the context of the actions of the Swedish prosecutorial authorities comes into play because here we see that there were quite a lot of resistance to pursuing less restrictive ways of interviewing Mr Assange. So instead of issuing a European arrest warrant and insisting on his transfer to Sweden for an in-person interview to face allegations of rape, the Swedish authority prosecutorial authorities could have pursued an interview in other ways while balancing out other rights that Assange is able to hold. So the less restrictive means argument is a very important one in the way that the UN working group of arbitrary detention came to its conclusion and they were not the only ones. This is important to say that firstly that there were already indications at the time that the Swedish courts were also in dissenting judgments and in indications by judgments at the time that the longer this went on for, the more likely it was that the detention in the embassy was disproportionate in respect of all safeguards and respect of arbitrary detention. And that indicates that as the stalemate continued and as the prosecutorial authorities refused to intervene in any other way, there's that over time, and temporality is very important here, over time the stalemate became disproportionate and as a consequence Assange's deprivation was arbitrary. And for those reasons, I took the view that it was important to stand up and to defend the decision on public platforms, which is where I stand today. And I'm glad to see that other United Nations bodies have now come to conclusions which vindicate a number of the positions that we took at the time, which was certainly not popular with the mainstream of the legal profession. Thank you. Thank you so much for that helpful explanation. Could I just add that at the time, there was such a storm against the working groups opinion. And as Laura said, it was basically ridicule. Now, you may say that a minister or a prime minister is not accepting a ruling by a UN human rights body. Well, that's not special. You know, that could happen in Iran. I don't think the leader or any senior minister in China would bother, but there could be somebody further down in the system. Some other regimes I should not mention. Well, state leaders could say things like or lead heads of government like then senior ministers and actually also the prime minister at the time said in the UK and and in Sweden. And it was these moral firmer, because you know, we are good people. We don't commit human rights violations. So who are they. And you know this working group consisted of five members as they were I said they are specialists in this field, but they are five members from all over the world. Of course, the majority is not European. How can they pronounce on the human rights practices of the UK and of Sweden, but then it is the body that the Human Rights Council after endless consultation and procedures have appointed. And they are the specialist body on this, but then when Leora Leora Lazarus was then a professor in Oxford, she had this very clear. I say clinical legal argument, which is very difficult to counter because none of these people who had ridiculed the working groups opinion had understood or bothered or. Most of them are not able to to analyze it, of course, of course, not able to analyze in the way she did. But can I mention two other people who then stood up and and used all their persuasive force to support the views that Leora had is Diana Poe Kampner, who is the general counsel of Human Rights Watch. She was very early out and Kirsty Brimelow QC, who is Doughty Street criminal barrister, and she was at the time the chair of the English Bar Human Rights Committee. And in that storm of criticism and of ridicule from senior people and less senior people. The three of you were incredibly, incredibly important. And I know that when as Eva, when you get involved in this case, you get so much opposition and ridicule and you are undermined in so many ways. And I must say that I myself followed Juno Nassange from a from a distance. I had never met him. I had never been involved. I read through what I read about the leaks in the newspapers, but it was so obvious when you went into the case that here where clear violations here was a campaign a politically motivated campaign by powers organs of the state. In the US in the UK and in Sweden, and even though there could be very good people in between her you know very decent judges, very decent prosecutors, they were being abused and in a way, which does not look good. But remember also, and I think Leora has written about this. There are dissents. They were dissents in the UK Supreme Court, the later president, Lady Hale, and her later vice president, Lord Mans, they dissented. And Lord Mans has proudly explained that their dissent was later used to overturn the ruling and in Assange, not for Assange's case, but for later cases. And in Sweden, when it got up to the Swedish Supreme Court that it was disproportionate to continue this extradition request without investigating in London, Leora's points. Then there was a judge who dissented and the reporting judge they have a system with a reporting judge who's not a Supreme Court judge but who prepares for the Supreme Court justices. She was also of the view that this was disproportionate. And then, when in the last round, the Swedish prosecutor, head prosecutor took up this extradition request, which they had stopped in the meantime, had ended in the meantime. And the way to make that effective was to go to a first instance Swedish court in the university town of Uppsala and ask for a pretrial detention order. And a very, I think, brave first instance judge, she said that this is disproportionate, out with the case. He says it's a very bleak picture. And I won't, in any way, try to reduce that it is a bleak picture and it's not good for the rule of law, but there are some individuals who have contributed. And Eva, there are several of your colleagues who come quite well out of it for what it's worth. I just wanted to add it. But my main point was of course to say that what Leora did at the time was enormously important and it made it possible to continue to discuss this in spite of all the immense and intense ridicule. Thank you, Mats. And that's very helpful. Eva, did I hear that you were going to respond to that? Please go ahead. No, I think that you have everywhere good people. And I started by saying that I didn't touch them in the beginning. I thought maybe they were stuck in their, maybe they were stubborn or they just wanted to go ahead with the case as they have decided. But as things went on, we discovered the true events, what had happened behind the curtains. And that was not very beautiful to see. I agree. The one thing before we go into the question and answers, I wanted to draw people's attention to a couple of things while the speakers have a quick look at the Q&A tab to give you a minute or two to look at the various questions and which ones you would like to answer. I'll just set the bottom of your screen for the speakers. I wanted to highlight the work done by Mark Gertis in the classified UK in highlighting the serious conflicts of interests in relation to Judge Emma Arbuthnot and the issues in relation to firstly, Judge Arbuthnot not recusing herself. And you will note now that this judge has now been promoted to the High Court, I believe, on the family bench. She is also not recusing herself in relation to her husband having arrangements with Sir Richard D'Alev, the former head of MI6, and her son having investments in dark trace, which is an organization that goes after organizations like WikiLeaks. I would like to highlight that as a legal observer for me it was quite depressing to attend Julian's trial because I have been following the administrative hearings as well as attending the hearings and also the verdict and the bail application. So this would be the way in which we were denied access to court and I commend Rebecca Vincent had reported with our boarders and her colleagues Christian Mir and those who tried to get into the court on behalf of the Civil Society organizations, 40 of whom were initially granted access and then denied access on the first day of the hearings. People like Rebecca persisted and queued up with the help of the grassroots activists from the committee to defend Julian Assange and also lots of ordinary citizens who tried to help us get one of two or three or four spaces on some days in the court, where you would be put in an adjacent courtroom and you could look at a small television screen from far away to see what was happening in the actual courtroom. For Rebecca to carry out her job for me to do my duties as the holding society's legal observer it was incredibly difficult and of course I speak here in a personal capacity, rather than on behalf of any organization. In attending the courts we made every effort to request access well in time. Our access in a reasonable request for access were denied within the court itself the way in which there was a very dehumanizing treatment of those of us who attended in the public gallery. There was a lot of intimidation outside the court, Rebecca and I were both threatened with arrest on the day of the final verdict. And even you know the way in which eight sets of policemen come one after the other to you and tell you that you shouldn't be standing there and nobody will be allowed in court and why are you even here. Suggest a certain, which I find quite a quite a contrast to the kind of support for dissidents like Navalny that is happening at the moment, versus the support for a case that is taking place in London and the way in which you know British politicians are coming out about all freedom of expression you know you shouldn't behave like this but there are these double standards which, which are very visible in this case, whether in the case of how judges treat even somebody who's clearly having mental health difficulties not necessarily mental health difficulties but just the result of years of psychological torture of five states colluding to stamp on his head. And, and the way in which they treat him put him in a box don't allow him to come out of the dark and confer with his lawyers and he has to talk over American lawyers in order to be able to get to talk to his lawyers is is a complete concept of basic principles of justice not to mention the spying on his privileged conversations within the embassy and and the conversations with his medical experts and the lack of access that he has to this day to his to the basic fundamental principles that most humans should be should do take for granted. And now, with your permission move to the questions and the first set of questions is from Radha Lassage, which says has an appeal against but it's his decision not to grant Julian Assange bail being filed. Is that even possible. Yes, it is possible. I'm not aware that it's been filed as of the beginning of this month judge, but not has been appointed to the High Court. Could this have any impact on the US appeal case. I'll come back to that, Radha, and I, could I take a question from the audience there's one person who's raised their hand. Hopefully you have, you are now unmuted, are in a roof. Would you be able to ask your question please. I'm not just going to move to the next question I beg your pardon while we sort out what's happening with that phone. Will Julian be finally free if the US US government loses once again in the court or is there any risk or any reason for the UK to continue to keep him in prison. So, if the request is turned down, there's no grounds to keep him in prison in the United Kingdom. So then they have to let him out. Eva, that's that's correct isn't it. Yes, we're both talking from abroad. There's no ongoing case. There is nothing against him unless they invite something else, but and you know the United Nations working group in 2015. They held that the now rather short period he was kept in isolation in the same prison he is today. The United Nations working group said that constituted. They have again put him into arbitrary detention. I know they made use of the international arguments, and I also know that the judges have been very critical of the international arguments, but I think they're very important to present in English courts. Yes, and when the case goes up, goes up to an appeal. I think they would be more anxious about not neglecting the international law. I believe also that the quality of the churches are much better. One of the points that Niels Meltzer has made is that it were Julian to where the US appeal to be denied Julian is still in a position of limbo because were he to go to a different jurisdiction he could still be the US could still again request extradition. And while he is in the UK, the lower court decision by Judge Brezza, which essentially criminalizes WikiLeaks and criminalizes journalism and also brings it within has made some comments about the criminality under the Official Secrets Act creates various risks in the UK as well. So it's almost as if a Damocles sword is hanging over Julian's head, irrespective of the outcome. Steve asks, can the individual ministers and public officials responsible for Julian's persecution and arbitrary detention be prosecuted for willfully ignoring their duty of care? There's no good instances of that being successful. That's clear, Liora and Eva, isn't it? But on the other hand, as a matter of having colluded in an arbitrary detention as a matter of law, both English law and international law, they should be able to prosecute them or bring damages actions etc. But it's completely unrealistic, both in the Swedish and in the UK situation, I'm afraid. Yes. The next question I think is best. Liora, beg your pardon, please go ahead. No, I just wanted to say that the most likely scenario is not prosecution but being an action being brought damages in public law and taught for violations of one of the maybe on the basis of violations of the Human Rights Act or violations of even torture with respect to torture. And that has been brought in the UK courts, but prosecution is highly unlikely. And it is interesting if you look at Article 10 of the European Convention, Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Two provisions about arbitrary detention are the only provisions which have a particular damage or compensatory tort or civil liability or administrative liability provision in it. And the only one. So, and that's because it's particularly abhorrent when public authorities arbitrarily detain somebody they should have that remedy, but how effective that will be very interesting to have such a case but I don't think it will be very likely to succeed. Thanks Matt. And if the next question is for you, I think, but also, of course, for the other speakers. Do you think a change in administration the US, the Biden administration will make any difference. And thereafter I will go to Arna who's finally managed to unmute himself and then be so just so Arna and BB are prepared you're up next. Eva, please. I'm afraid. I'm afraid it will not change because Biden. He is very much dependent of the cooperation with the moderate Republicans to achieve to achieve his program. I do not think that he will take the risk of making it more difficult for him on other subjects, because he has very important subject on his agenda. He must deal with the COVID situation. He, he got back in the Paris declaration to fight climate change, and he must deal with Iran. It's the big, big issue to get the deal to work and he would have very many enemies here. He will have Israel for sure. And also the Saudi Arabia. This is a very complicated situation and I think he is very much afraid of taking for him unnecessary risks towards the Republicans. So I'm afraid he will be very reluctant. But you could have a good surprise. Thank you. Unless Liora and Mats want to add anything. And could I move to Arna who I hope is it can be heard now. Arna, would you like to ask your question? Yes. There is an issue. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. There's an aspect of this related to Sweden, which I think. Arna, we can't hear you please. Could you repeat that? Yes. There is one aspect of in order to understand the Swedish case, especially now also because this has become even more prevalent. The women's rights issue is used to completely deny the relevance of the what has been happening to Assange. And he is a sex blaster in according to what is now has now become an even stronger public opinion due to the fact that one of the two women has published a book where she makes this case against him. She doesn't say that she's been sexually molested, but the way she paints it is that she's been the victim of male violence psychological and in other senses. Now, the question of the women's rights issue. In some way has to be included in the discussion. Otherwise, it will be impossible in Sweden to bring the real issues into this, which means that in my opinion, there is a misuse of the women's rights position. It's used in a vein. Yes. And my question is, can this issue of women's rights in any way be brought into the discussion outside Sweden? Thank you for that question. Before I go to the panelists, could I just say that we will have a future event with a few experts in the area of women's rights, where I think would be the best place for this question to be dealt with, but I'm sure Eva will join us on the day to offer her thoughts, as will the other panelists. So I'd like to move to a question specifically. Deepak, Deepak, can I just say that before from what Liora said, that the question here was not what Julian Assange was accused of. The question was, could they interview him in London? Was it disproportionate to maintain this extradition request when they did not interview him in London? And then I hear some specialists saying that, well, if we don't interview people in London, that is not true. I have found cases, both from Norway and Sweden, where police have for very serious offences, interviewed people in London, and also for less serious offences. So the question is not then the allegation, the veracity of the allegations. That was not a question for the working group in 2015. It was the way in which the Swedish authorities and the UK authorities had handled this investigation. The same question was up before the Swedish courts and in the end in the Swedish Supreme Court. That's where the one judge dissented and the reporting judge had the view of the dissenting judge. And it was again the argument before or in the decision of the Swedish first instance judge in Uppsala who ended the whole Swedish process by saying, come on, you have to show something. You have to show that you actually have gone through anything meaningful, whatever the accusations against Mr Assange. So I think that is that is a way of replying to this. And Laura, I know you follow this more closely than me. Yeah, I just, I wanted to say that the position that the UN working group on our detention took more no relation to the merits of the factual allegations against him with respect to sexual violence and it isn't my I think my the difficulties has been that large amounts of energy has been spent on discrediting those allegations. I'm not in a position to judge those allegations and I don't have never at any stage wish to discredit them. And one of the things that should be clear from human rights is that human rights are not necessarily held by people who are entirely good people. They may be compromise people, they may be complex and we can hold those truths together at the same time. But if human rights are only given to people that we believe are heroes. Then we will have be in a very difficult time procedural rights and the right not to be arbitrarily detained belongs to all people, regardless of allegations against them. Mr. is saying is for the public opinion, I think he says that public opinion, they do not care about the legality of the proceedings they want to understand the case. And I think I experienced in the European Parliament that it was impossible to talk about Julian Assange because of the women's right and that he had the reputation that made it. The people defending women's rights, which is a huge and very important issue, they didn't look into the into Julian's case because they stopped at this level. And, but he is very right that we cannot win the public opinion, unless we are able to to talk a little bit about it, I think. Thank you, Eva. And thank you, Leora and Marks for your contributions. I'd like to take one final question because we're very close to our end time and I'd also like to bring in John Reese from the don't extra diet Assange campaign to answer some of the questions, which are here which John very kindly has agreed to answer around how people can get involved with the campaign. The last question I'll take is from Nikki, who's under the handle cut your campus which is, isn't it isn't it true that the UN working group on arbitrary detentions findings are no longer being taken seriously because many western governments no longer comply with anything that the working group on arbitrary detention or the UN says. And I wondered if any of our speakers had any responses to that. The position of human rights law internationally is always in threat in threat. I don't believe that it is necessarily therefore discredited body. It's the role of international human rights organizations to continue to work and to legitimate their position and their roles. But at the end of the day, states at domestic level have to answer whether they wish to abide by the international rule of law and whether they wish to accord the right respect and comedy to the bodies that are elected through the systems. And that is where the domestic pressure I think needs to be light can't be up to states to pick and choose the judgements that they like. They must either decide to come up with a better solution or they should recognize that the international rule of law is something that is fundamental. And that goes to the UK's position on the European Court of Human Rights, which for those of you who are in the UK will be is a very, very present and imminent challenge. And so we will see how that also develops. Yes, as I said, nobody likes to be found out. Nobody likes to be criticized. And of course, not in particular, not the country like the UK or country like Sweden. There was so much moral fervor. You know, I have difficulties finding independent professors in Sweden. I could talk rationally about this. They feel that even even even professors who come from abroad and live in Sweden, they feel they have to take the side of their nation. This is a national interest my country, right or wrong. It's my country. That's one aspect of it. And the other thing is that all countries love human rights when they can use human rights as a rod against an enemy. These are very basic things. But at the same time, we live in an international legal system around the United Nations and in Europe, around the Council of Europe and the Human Rights Court. We want those systems to work. And then of course, politicians have to control themselves. It is a very bad politician is very naughty politician. And then I when I say use those words, it sounds like I'm marginalizing it. But I don't mean to do it. It is a very conscious attack on the rule of law when politicians do the things they've done. It's very conscious attack on the rule of law when I am afraid to say some English and some Swedish judges have not taken account of the international obligations. And it should be condemned and it should be criticized. And I think that's what we as a civil society should do. We should make sure that this is remembered. It's analyzed. It's brought up again. It's brought up again next year. The year after in five years when these people are for promotion, when one writes their obituaries, you know, when they die of old age, hopefully in the far future. They should be remembered for those illiberal attacks on human rights and the international legal order we need to supervise and defend human rights. Thank you, maths. Some questions. And thank you to all our speakers. So far we'll try and bring you all back in to give your final thoughts and wrap towards the end of the wrapping up but I'd like to move now to and welcome John Reese, who's who heads up the Don't Extradite Assange campaign in the UK. John, there are a few questions under the Q&A tab, which you probably have seen, and some are procedural questions about whether you can appeal but it says decision on bail, and things like that but there are also questions around how individuals can get involved, particularly in supporting the campaign and supporting Julian. So, some questions around Kirstalmer's role as DPP, which I don't know if anybody on the panel wants to answer, and also amnesty's position on Julian's extension, which comes from Michael Clarke, who's at the Peace and Neutrality Alliance in Dublin. So if you could take some of those questions, John, over to you. Thanks very much, Deepa, and sorry to drop in late, I was at another meeting. Let me just say a word about the bail then, it's possible to appeal the bail conditions but any bail appeal now would go to the High Court and therefore would come before a High Court judge who might possibly be the High Court judge or one of the judges that would hear the main appeal being launched by the United States. There's therefore a tactical question about whether or not that's a good idea given that bail is very, very difficult to achieve in this case. So you might be making a bail appeal, which would prejudice a judge in the main case. So there's a tactical decision to be made there by Julian and his legal team, which I don't think has been fully resolved as yet. But I don't think there'll be a bail appeal anytime soon. So on the other issues, I think there are of course a long and complex history to this case. Julian's been in some form of detention now for 10 years. He's been in Belmarsh for two years. And I think any case that has the ramifications that this case has has the history that this case has is inevitably complex for people and raises many, many different issues. But what I'd appeal to people to do now is to clear the decks, to move that prehistory off the table. Because although the road here has been long and winding, we have now reached the decisive phase of this campaign. It seems a difficult thing to get your head around after 10 years, but that's where we are. The decision by the magistrates court on the 4th of January was a watershed in this case. It squashed the American appeal for extradition. And we've now got to make sure that it stays squashed. And that decision will be taken by the appeal court, possibly as early as May or June, probably no later than August or September. And therefore, the campaigning period in this absolutely vital case is now a matter of some months at the most. So we have to focus our energies not on what the debates have been in the past, but what the debates are coming up. What will influence the decision? What will influence the High Court in either upholding the decision to squash the extradition? And therefore, in all probability, if the High Court does that, Julian walks free or to reverse it in the Americans favor, in which case not only does he stay in Belmarsh, but stand a much higher chance of actually being extradited to the United States. So I would say there are two issues. The Americans can only appeal on the decision that the judge made, which is that no one in Julian's state of mind should be put inside the American prison system because it will be a risk to his life. And therefore, what we need is petition after petition, speech after speech, article after article proving, and let's face it, it's not a difficult thing to prove that the American prison system is, as the judge said, it was oppressive, too brutal for a human being that suffered what Julian has suffered to be put into. And we need to make sure that that case is upheld in the appeal court. And as everybody knows, court cases are 150% in court and 50% in the court of public opinion. So convincing people in general in the society that the case that was made is correct, that the prison system is brutal, is oppressive, is a threat to life, needs to be reinforced, the political environment in which the judges will make that decision needs to be reinforced on that critical point. But although it won't be the grounds of the American appeal, we also need to insist that this is all about a free press, all about civil liberties. There is nothing else at stake here. No matter how much has been said about Julian Assange, how much has been said in the past, when it comes right down to it, this is only about one question. Do you think that you are entitled to know what governments are doing with your tax dollars, with your tax pounds in your name, in foreign theaters of war? That's what the Afghan and Iraq logs were about. That's what Guantanamo Bay files were about. That's what the diplomatic cables were about. If you think you have the right to know what the government is doing in your name but doesn't want to tell you, then you are a defender of Julian Assange. Because that's what he did. And that's the only thing that the Americans are interested in prosecuting him about. So this is all about defending a free press. It's all about defending journalists and whistleblowers' rights to tell you things that governments and corporations don't want you to know. Now, for all the complexity in the history of this case, that is a blindingly simple message. And it's one which commands the support of millions of our fellow citizens. And so it's an argument that has been increasingly in the last year or so, one. And I just want to end with this point. The campaigning has worked. The campaigning has turned the tide. We aren't where we were 18 months or two years ago. When I last visited Julian in Belmarsh before the lockdown began, he was very, very insistent, as he always is, to make this point. He said, we are not a minority. We are not a minority. We are not a tiny, embattled group of people who have to pour over every last thing that happened in the past in order to win public opinion. Amnesty International and practically every civil rights NGO in the world, 40 of them, are on our side. The editorial position of the Daily Telegraph in this country is in favour of Julian Assange. The editorial position of the Daily Mail is in favour of Julian Assange. The editorial position of the Times newspaper is in favour of Julian Assange. Now, if the rest of us on the progressive left can't get this into our heads, I know it's difficult. I know it's hard to understand that the Telegraph might be arguing the same thing as you are, but it happens to be true. And that isn't something which should detract from your enthusiasm. It should be something which builds your enthusiasm because it's the campaigning of ordinary people that have got this change in the political environment to take place. Major union after major union in this country, the biggest union in this country, unite the union with 1.5 million members, now has a policy of supporting Julian Assange. So does the National Education Union. So does the National Union of Journalists. So does the Train Drivers Union. Aslet, we are not alone in this battle. Tide has turned. A victory has been secured and it must be taken forward and not reversed. That's our task. We have weeks and months to do that. So roll up your sleeves, go to the DEA website, get the petitions, get the memes, get the articles, get sharing. Go to your trade union, go to your church, go to your mosque, go to your community organization and get this policy through so that it becomes hegemonic in the society. That everybody knows that the majority of their fellow citizens think that Julian Assange shouldn't be extradited. Thanks very much. Brilliant, John. Thank you. I'd like to come back to our three speakers and I'll invite you if I may in the order that in the reverse order, which you spoke. So could I start with Eva, please? You have a minute or so to provide some wrapping up thoughts. Sure that the public opinion is important. Churches are not leaving in a vacuum. So the public opinion is very important. And the campaigning is paramount in the month to come so that the churches know that we are watching them and we want them to apply the law and we want them to say that he cannot be extradited for very good, good, legal reasons. And we also have the health issue. We know how brutal and terrible the American prison system is. So I think we have good hope now that we will be successful. So Eva, over to you, Leora, with my apologies, you were the last speaker and I went the wrong way round. Please. I just wanted to say that I think what's interesting now in respect the difference between now and 2016 is that the, the allegations that were being made in 2016, or the statements that were being made in 2016 on behalf of Julian Assange, were that he risked being extradited to the United States. And many of the cases that led up to the 2016 point in the UK Supreme Court as well, tended to put that aside as not a material factor in the consideration of the context. Now that context is transparent and clear the campaigning position is clear and the campaigning position doesn't necessarily have to be very far from legal position which is, does this constitute an offense under British law in order to satisfy the double criminality requirement of extradition. And I think that that the disappointment on the side of the UK courts was that it didn't quite address that issue, because that is the issue that goes to the freedom of expression question. So, as much as I and as a prisoner's rights scholar, as much as I absolutely support the view that the US prisons are highly oppressive, particularly for the regimes that Assange can is likely to expect based on experience of Chelsea Manning's detention. And I would also clarify that the double criminality requirement must be fulfilled in order for the extradition conditions to be fulfilled. And that is a question of freedom of speech. Thank you for putting that so clearly, that's really helpful. And final word to you, Max. I find it very timely that you both reminded us that in 2015-16, if you have spoken to anybody involved in the process, the senior judges or anybody in the ministries or foreign affairs or wherever they were and you said, actually, this will end up with an extradition to the United States, they said, no, no. Conspiracy theorists. And then there are conspiracies, and there are conspiracies, and this is a conspiracy which has been proven to be true. And it's all about freedom of expression, of course, that's what it's about. And then we must not forget that if you look at this from the point of view of those who want to silence Julian Assange, not only take revenge on him, but stop him from working, they have largely succeeded. He's been kept in these inhumane conditions since, well, for all those years. And what now is important, what is now, I think it is a couple of more technical aspects. I think it's very important, and when this case goes, is it equal to appeal, isn't it, that they have submissions by NGOs, by international organizations, and that the lawyers are supported by interveners from positions of authority in international law. So that they have this material is not possible to say, oh, for instance, the working group, that was a fluke. Solid argument in authoritative submissions, which the court will receive is, I think, a very important thing to achieve. And then it is for civil society to react in the way civil society can react. As we know, in one sense, the tide has turned. And of course, I agree with that. And now it's to make the legal system draw the consequences, you know, and actually apply the law the way the law should be applied. And then civil society must make sure that if he gets out on the street very soon, which he must, that you cannot get away with this kind of conspiracies with these kinds of repressive actions. So civil society must react straight away. And with force, you know, we must make sure that newspapers and all this, when I say with force, I of course mean by writing and by arguing of course, that's how you win that this is how you win these discussions, because Julian Assange is Julian Assange and we are very concerned for him, but he's also a representative of something we want also others to undertake in our societies. We want Julian Assange out of prison. We want him to continue his work. I don't agree in all aspects of his work, but we most certainly agree in that he should be out there doing important work, and we must have more people like him. And by treating him the way they have done, then you have to be a very brave person. If you were Julian Assange to continue your work. And if you were not Julian Assange to try to do anything like what he has done. And that's where we as civil society must be much better in protecting people like him and not let ourselves be derailed by all of these different funny turns and rather propaganda like attacks on Julian Assange. Thank you. Thank you, Mads. And on that note, I just want to remind everybody that at the end of this month, we will have another event under the Free the Truth banner in relation to the global intelligence files, which you probably know as the strat for leaks. And we will talk about the issues there, but we'll also keep coming back to the, to how we can build grassroots support and how we can get people to understand. I know one of Julian's lawyers said to me that it feels like 10 cases all in one and it's very difficult for most people to understand what's going on. So I'm hoping that conversations such as this with our eminent panelists and guests will allow us to have those discussions. My name is Deepa Govindarajan driver. You can follow me at the rate Deepa underscore driver on Twitter and I will let you know the details of that of that event, but I also want to highlight to you the don't extradite Assange campaign page don't extraditeassange.com please use that to find all the information that you need and I'm sure John will put in more details in the chat for those who will find that helpful. Thank you very much to our fantastic panelists for all your contributions. I'm so grateful that you came and spend so much of your time with us I know you all need very busy lives and it's quite late where you are. Thank you to the 300 odd people who were here at the height of this conversation and the 200 who are still here to chat to us. Thank you. It shows how wonderful this battle has been. Thank you all very much and thank you to all our guests and panelists and all the attendees. Good night. Good night. Good night.